I Received a Liebster Award…Again

(Hopefully you read that title in your mind with Bill Murray’s voice from Groundhog Day.)

Alex Jowski at Alex Jowski Movie Reviews gave me the Liebster Award.  I’d like to thank him for that.  Now here’s the most interesting part of it – I received the Liebster Blog Award in February of this year (you can read my post on it here), but that award appears to be different from this one.  Between February and today it got bitten by a radioactive spider, got a high dose of gamma radiation, or fell into a vat of chemicals and emerged wholly changed by the experience.

How is it different?  The original one was designed to recognize blogs with fewer than 200 Followers.  The recipient would go on to nominate five other blogs that he or she felt were deserving of more recognition.  The current one includes a set of 11 things you should tell about yourself, 11 questions from the awarder to answer, then it should be passed on to 11 other blogs with 11 new questions.  No restriction on the number of Followers is set.

My apologies to everyone, especially Alex, but I have chosen not to pass this on to others.  While some bloggers love to participate in these, others prefer not to receive them because they are the blogging equivalent of a chain letter.  I don’t have a problem participating in things of this nature (see below for my part of the requirements), but I don’t want to make other people think they have to participate when they don’t want to.

By the way, anyone know who this Liebster is?

11 Things About Chip Lary

1. I was born a poor black child.  No, wait.  That was Steve Martin.  I get us confused sometimes.  (He’s the one that’s funnier.)  I was born before Man set foot on the Moon and I wanted nothing more than to be an astronaut when I grew up.
2. The first movie I have a memory of seeing in a movie theater is Charlotte’s Web (1973).
3. I saw almost no movies, other than ones broadcast on the major channels, until I graduated from college.  I was living on the edge, paying off student loans, so about my only entertainment after graduating was watching movies on cable channels.  The vast majority of the movies I have seen have been since that time.
4. I have no idea how many movies I have now seen, but I know it’s somewhere north of 5,000 because I have rated almost that many movies on Netflix and I’ve seen a lot of other movies that they don’t even list.
5. If forced to choose one, single film as my favorite, I would not pick the usual greats like Citizen Kane or The Godfather.  I would pick The Princess Bride (1987).  I wrote about that here.
6. When I was 12 years old that answer would have been The Parent Trap (1961).  I saw this on the Disney Movie of the Week and literally thought about the film every day for the next month.  My parents were divorced, I was the only boy, and the idea of having a brother to play with and get my parents back together was very appealing.
7. The first actress I ever saw in a movie and felt the stirrings of “hey, she’s kind of interesting and not at all covered with cooties” was Diane Lane in A Little Romance.
8. The movie that men will tend to admit to crying at when they saw it is Field of Dreams.  I am no exception.  I lost my father a few years before this movie came out and he and I used to play catch when I was younger.  After this film ended I so badly wanted to play catch with my dad again and I couldn’t.
9. The first subtitled film I ever saw was Jean de Florette (1986) and its follow-up Manon of the Spring (1986).  They were fantastic and I never shied away from foreign films after that.
10. I saw them on Cinemax in the late 80s, which was often derided as “Skinemax” because Friday nights they would show some European soft core film like Emmanuelle.  They actually showed a ton of other movies, including new foreign, independent, and documentary films each month.  It’s because of Cinemax that I saw the first films from Kevin Smith (Clerks), Robert Rodriguez (El Mariachi), Spike Lee (She’s Gotta Have It), Robert Townsend (Hollywood Shuffle), Michael Moore (Roger and Me), and many others.
11. I researched, compiled, edited, and published a 900 page genealogy on one branch of my family (the Parkmans).  Hey, I had to have one non-movie related thing here.

11 Questions from Alex for Me to Answer

1. What do you enjoy most about blogging?

When someone lets me know they watched a movie because of my recommendation and that they really enjoyed it.

2. What movie do you end up recommending to people more than any other movie?

I often push Whale Rider (2002) because it’s not as well known as other movies that I also love.  You can read my recommendation for it here.

3. What celebrity or artist have you have met who has inspired you the most in your life?

I haven’t ever met anybody famous in the entertainment world.  I ran into former basketball pro Dave Cowens on a golf course once.  I’ve met Senators and Representatives, but I wouldn’t say any of them have inspired me.  I can’t really give an answer to this question.  Sorry.

4. What is your favorite "bad" movie?

This is probably harder than naming my favorite good movie.  If I like a movie I don’t consider it bad.  I’ll pick a somewhat recent film just because I liked it a lot more than most everyone else who saw it and that is Sucker Punch (2011).  I wrote about that here.

5. What is a movie that offends you - a movie you hate for moral reasons.

I don’t think an entire movie has ever offended me.  Scenes within them have (i.e. Salo).  The most prevalent trend across movies that bothers me is films that present men as nothing more than rapists who just haven’t had the right trigger yet that will cause them to mindlessly force themselves on a woman.

6. What are two of your favorite books that have NEVER been adapted into a movie?

Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein and Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card.  I hear the latter may finally show up as a film some time next year.

7. Whose opinion do you trust more in deciding if a movie is good or not? Critics in magazines/newspapers, fellow bloggers, or the general public (like imdb scores, etc.)?

Professional critics would definitely come last.  There was a time when I would literally use them as a negative guide to movies (if they hated it, I would watch it).  I suppose I treat recommendations from bloggers and people I know about the same.  You get a feeling for who has similar tastes to you and you pay more attention to them when they recommend something.

8. Which game from your childhood do you wish you could play again? (Could be a video game or a playground game like Tag).

Well, I could still play baseball today by joining a league somewhere, but what I miss about playing baseball as a kid is tossing the bat, choosing sides, sharing gloves and the single bat, the beat up baseball, the ratty field, the random objects for bases, etc.  In other words, I miss the things that made it something for kids, not something for adults.

9. Do you have a nickname?  How did you get that name?

Actually, Chip is my nickname.  I was named after my father and instead of calling me “Junior” or something similar, my family called me Chip.  No one remembers why, or who started it, but their best guess is it was short for “chip off the old block”.

10. What was the first thing you posted on your blog and why?  (Initial "Welcome to my Blog" posts don't count).

I did a set of related posts on the three films that won all five major Oscars, a book review, and a hike.  My original intent was to do a set like this each week and I would post them all at the same time once per week.  I also had a post where I asked people to pick the next movie category I should write about (among the three choices I offered), but despite several hundred views I got not one single reply.  Since then I’ve just picked the movie categories myself.  And after joining the LAMB I started concentrating more on movies, and I started spreading the posts out instead of doing them all at once. 

11. What is your favorite beverage?

About all I drink is milk with breakfast, water when I’m thirsty, Coke when I pick up a pizza, and Sprite as a general drink with other meals.  I’ve never been much of a coffee drinker, and with a history of alcoholism in my ancestry I’ve chosen not to be an alcohol drinker.